There is only one “Pickle”.
Growing up on the south side of Chicago you don’t get to pick your own nickname. Still, there is only one “Pickle”. Everybody knows that’s Mike Joyce, owner of the Celtic Boxing Club on 111th Street in the Mt. Greenwood neighborhood.
Where he got the name, he doesn’t remember, “maybe cuz I was always in a pickle.” The name stuck, and over the years the legend of Pickle Joyce just kept rollin’ with the punches.
His dad Jeremiah Joyce was a cop turned state senator and Mayor Daley confidante, whose four sons have all battled in one way or another in the blood sport of Chicago politics. CHEEKY CHALLENGE: The Greatest shadow boxes the young "Pickle"
As a 19-year-old aspiring boxer, Mike met Heavyweight Champion of the World Muhammed Ali by chance on the street. Ali spun the kid around and slapped his face, “Can the white boy fight?”, taunting Pickle, to the delight of the quickly forming crowd.
They would meet again many years later when Pickle got his revenge and married Ali’s gorgeous daughter Jamillah. But that makes it sound too easy.
Mike “Pickle” Joyce had a checkered career as an amateur and pro boxer, got his law degree, worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, fought his share of political battles helping a handful of candidates while coaching young black boxers at Leo High School in the heart of the ghetto. He’s helped hundreds of young men stay out of gangs, stay away from drugs, stay alive.
Violence erupts every night on the streets of Chicago as young men are cut down in the prime of life. If you’re a young African American male between the ages of 12 to 20 the odds ain’t in your favor.
This last weekend alone, 19 people were shot in Chicago, one fatally. There were 800 homicides in the city last year, a level not seen in 25 years.
For many at-risk youngsters, then, Pickle offers them a way up and a way out, through boxing.
Joyce founded the Celtic Boxing Club in 1993 and opened their current location on 111th street in 2005. He’s coached hundreds of young fighters since then, instructing them not only in the sweet science but as a mentor and friend helping find jobs and futures after boxing.
As Pickle’s ring announcer John “Killer” Kilmartin tells it, “Mike’s a hard ass…. with a heart of gold.”
#TeamNico - #NicoAliWalsh @NicoAliX74 is ready for his pro debut tonight, flanked by his family, L-R Amira, Nico, Mike Joyce @CelticBoxinClub , Nadia. All rockin” the exclusive golden Team Nico Ali Walsh shirts. pic.twitter.com/gKKmY3Vbbk
— sloneart (@sloneart) August 14, 2021
Pickle met his wife Jamillah through former Chicago Park District Superintendent Ed Kelly at his annual “Giant Awards” dinner, when he chatted her up, mistaking her for her twin sister Rasheda, who married Mike’s pal Bob Walsh.
Sounds like these Ali sisters got a thing for Southside Irish Catholic men and Pick tells me, “Yeah, they must be gluttons for punishment!”
Happy and proud to be managing the career of my driver and nephew @Nico Ali Walsh pic.twitter.com/UgmwO6lbNd
— mike joyce (@CelticBoxinClub) June 20, 2021
Romance blossomed and when Ali was in Ireland celebrating his Irish roots in County Clare in 2009, Mike told the Champ and his wife he was going to ask Jamillah to marry him. TYING THE KNOT: Mike and Jamillah on their wedding day
“So, they invited us to their suite in Ennis and Muhammed sez, “Jamillah, is this your boyfriend?’ She said yeah, and I said ‘Muhammed, I love your daughter. I wanna marry her’. And she’s like, ‘knock it off Mike, you don’t know my father well enough to joke around like that.’, she sez ‘Daddy, he’s a joker, he’s kidding,’ then when she saw the ring, she realized it was real, and then she was like shocked, and Muhammed took the ring when she was hugging me, and he hid it.”
Six months later they got married in Florida and today the family is Jamillah, Mike, daughters Nadia and Amira, and son Jake, 10. They’ve been through a lot together, in the last 11 years, including the death of the Champ in 2016.
The newest professional boxer in the family is Mike’s nephew, Middleweight Nico Ali Walsh, who is 4-0 as a pro and will next fight Saturday night April 30th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Pickle is a coach and “utility” man mentor, trainer, and advisor to the young man, who is represented by iconic fight promoter Bob Arum.
The fight will be televised on ESPN and Mike tells me proudly, “At the pace he’s fighting now, he’ll be the most televised fighter in the world for the next couple. years.”
These days Pickle puts his own son Jake through his paces in the gym. The kid is looking good as he, “floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.”
